HASuring pension reforms, the question of senior employment has provided a good example of what Alain Supiot calls Governance by numbers (Fayard, “Pluriel”, 2020). Changes in the parameters for access to retirement, the durations and amounts of unemployment benefits or the numbers eligible for early departures have aimed, among other things, at increasing the number of older workers in employment. Added to this now, in the orientation document for a new pact for life at work, is a target of 65% employment rate for 60-64 year olds in 2030, in six years – compared to 33% today. today.
The underlying idea is that employers and employees will be able to adapt their decisions and behaviors so that these digital frameworks are viable. This prognosis seems very fragile. The employment rate of 60-64 year olds has increased by 8.5 points over the last six years; the planned increase would therefore be four times faster. However, according to national surveys, in 2021, 11% of 55-61 year olds were neither employed nor retired, for reasons of health or disability.
In 2019, 18% of those aged 50 and over did not feel able to continue in their job until retirement. The matching of data from old age and sickness funds has also shown the increase in absences around the age of sixty. All these phenomena are accentuated if we look at the low-skilled, or among employed women. Finally, as age increases, access rates to training decrease, and unemployment durations increase.
For long-term risk prevention policies
These findings argue for a reversal of perspective, by focusing attention on work, its constraints, its meaning for those who perform it, the suffering and pleasures it gives rise to; particularly towards the end of working life, but not only that. Knowledge about aging at work and the examination of interesting initiatives in certain companies would make it possible to support reflections and guide action by distinguishing an aging ” by “ work, ” compared with “ to its requirements, or ” In “ its realization.
The first part refers to the accumulation, over the course of professional life, of constraints or nuisances likely to accentuate or accelerate the occurrence of health deficiencies, in areas such as joints, quality of hearing or sleep. . These effects persist after retirement, and this is the main justification for the personal prevention account (C2P). This gives the right to early departures, part-time work or retraining. But its scope is limited: it is quite recent, without retrospective aim; its thresholds are rather high, and the items of physical effort or exposure to toxic products were removed in 2017.
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